Britain in the Raw

COOL IT CAROL (1970)
GOODBYE GEMINI (1970)

Released by AIP in the United States as DIRTIEST GIRL I EVER MET, COOL IT CAROL is a kitsch time capsule of swinging London that also started Britain's love affair with Robin Askwith's naked arse.

COOL IT CAROL and GOODBYE GEMINI were released within four months of each other in the latter half of 1970, both telling tales of young couples traveling to London. Inspired by a true story, COOL IT CAROL is part sex comedy part cautionary tale, and Pete Walker's finest slice of sexploitation before shifting to horror. Butcher boy Joe Sickles (Robin Askwith) and garage attendant Carol Thatcher (Janet Lynn in a role intended for Susan George) leave Shropshire to seek fame and fortune. With Joe unable to find work, he soon becomes Carol's manager, Thatcher guiding their wealth through modelling, cheap porn loops and prostitution ("it's only a fuck - I can't believe people pay good money for it.") As Carol becomes a high class call girl with Sheikh and cabinet minister clients, the pair become tired of fabricated existence and return home to resume their old jobs. 

COOL IT CAROL benefits from a solid Murray Smith script and strong performances (we are naturally enthused by Joe and Carol to the extent that the pimping sequence is quite harrowing). Unsurprisingly the papers couldn't see past the smut, describing it as "liable (if not calculated) to corrupt" (Evening News) and "a patch of untreated effluent" (Sunday Times). Similar to Walker's exploitation breakthrough HOUSE OF WHIPCORD, COOL IT CAROL portrays corruption as being far more dictated (and practiced) by those with higher moral standing, where sexual possession is seen as commodity (even in the filmmaker's 1969 travesty SCHOOL FOR SEX, a Judge takes over promiscuous reigns). After all, this is a London for the domain of young players, greasy businessmen and seedy politicians, in Soho clubs with indoor swimming pools.

Judy Geeson, Martin Potter and Alexis Kanner enjoy a London on the threshold of hippie disintegration in GOODBYE GEMINI.

Judy Geeson and Martin Potter star as fraternal birth partners Jacki and Julian Dewar in Alan Gibson's GOODBYE GEMINI. A companion piece to MUMSY, NANNY, SONNY AND GIRLY in its portrayal of childlike family interaction, Jacki and Julian, on a University break, are sent by their father to an old Chelsea Embankment house and immediately hospitalise their elderly governess. They frequent London's underground party scene - complete with Jacki's teddy bear Agamemnon - and are soon ensnared by hustler Clive Landseer (Alexis Kanner with elaborate sideburns). Clive is using the Dewars to shroud him from gangster Road Barstowe (Mike Pratt), who he owes a large gambling debt; Clive blackmails Julian by plying him with whiskey and marijuana then taking him to a hotel room with two transvestite prostitutes. When Landseer is stabbed to death by the twins in a ritual - dressed in bed sheets as makeshift ceremonial robes - Agamemnon is cut in half, and Jacki goes on the run.

Adapted from Jenni Hall's experimental and fragmented 1964 novel Ask Agamemnon, the film abandons the book's Greek tragedy and fantasy sequences for a more linear experience, focusing more on Julian's incestuous yearning. Although it is hard to categorise - psychological sexploitation is perhaps nearest the mark - GOODBYE GEMINI is a surprisingly dull affair. Geeson (at the height of her career following TO SIR WITH LOVE) and Potter (fresh from Fellini's SATYRICON) are overshadowed by Kanner's stellar performance; neither does their journey gel with the older performers ("two old tombstones" Michael Redgrave as "member of parliament with a heart" and partygoer Freddie Jones). It is all too hedonistic to be enjoyable; self-indulgence is one thing, but no production can cope with such a quirky mix of naivety and ruthlessness. At least the fashions and party scenes are garish enough to hold interest, priming Gibson for helming Hammer's DRACULA A.D. 1972.

Hampden House of Horror

HAMMER HOUSE OF HORROR (1980)

The House That Bled To Death is a double-twist shocker featuring a priceless scene where a pipe spurts blood over children at a party. A family move into the dilapidated abode where a man had carved up his wife with an ornamental machete, though the new owners have an Amityville-like agenda of their own.

TELEVISION always served Hammer films well. After all, if it wasn't for the success of their adaptation THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT, it is likely that their vivid re-imaginings of Frankenstein and Dracula would have never been made. By the 1970s, Hammer's usual output of costumed gothique was in its death throes, slices of entertainment that seemed frozen in time. However, the studio's big screen spin-off of ON THE BUSES was a box-office phenomenon, leading the studio on a comedic vein which included LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR and MAN ABOUT THE HOUSE. Hammer's attempts to make TV projects of their own resulted in four separate ventures; the series under consideration here was followed by HAMMER HOUSE OF MYSTERY AND SUSPENSE, but earlier projects were TALES OF FRANKENSTEIN - an abortive pilot starring Anton Diffring - and seventeen episodes of JOURNEY TO THE UNKNOWN.

British horror had largely become past tense from the mid-70s; Tigon's last official release was the sex film COME PLAY WITH ME, and Amicus ceased production after THE PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT in 1979, the same year in which Hammer called in the receivers. But two former board members, Brian Lawrence and Roy Skeggs, assumed control and immediately began looking at ways to revitalise the company. Lawrence and Skeggs needed a new base of operations and leased Hampden House in Buckinghamshire - close to Hammer's spiritual home of Bray - to develop a new series for television. A former private house and exclusive Girl's School, the majestic property and surrounding areas are used ad infinitum, and most of the production, including the editing, was overseen there. Assembling their crew, the two men unsurprisingly drafted in a number of former Hammer employees, including directors Peter Sasdy, Alan Gibson and Don Sharp, visual effects man Ian Scoones, and James Bernard scored two stories.

Diana Dors and her brood in Children of the Full Moon, a long way from Oliver Reed and THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF.

Funded by ITC and screened between 13th September and 6th December 1980, the 13 episodes of the HAMMER HOUSE OF HORROR were refreshingly bleak, mixing contemporary horror and titillation in the manner of Norman J. Warren (with Frankenstein and Dracula nowhere in sight). Hampered by meagre budgets, pedestrian scripts and flat direction, the fifty-minute stories are surprisingly watchable, thanks to their variety of topics - devil worship, time-travelling witches, cannibalism and Nazi pet shop owners - and stars such as Hammer favourites Peter Cushing, John Carson and Robert Urquhart, together with Brian Cox, Jon Finch and Warren Clarke et al (a young Pierce Brosnan appears as a randy jogger victim, a character so incidental that he's even denied an onscreen death).

HAMMER HOUSE OF HORROR falls into that notion lovingly referred to as guilty pleasures. Even the worst entry, Carpathian Eagle, stars Suzanne Danielle as a psychotic seductress/writer who rips out the heart of her victims with a dagger. The best two episodes hold up as memorable slabs of TV horror: The Two Faces of Evil is a dazzling doppelganger yarn with a genuinely jolting prologue, and the delirious The Mask of Satan sees a morgue worker believing he has a disease engineered to bring Satan to Earth. The rest of the output fall somewhere in between; at least Rude Awakening attempts something different in its total abandonment of logic, with adulterous estate agent Denholm Elliott persistently accused of murdering his wife; and VAMPIRE CIRCUS helmer Robert Young brings some stylish flourishes to the voodoo-themed Charlie Boy.

Dracula Over London

DRACULA, A.D. 1972 (1972)
THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA (1973)

"Hammer find of 1971" Caroline Munro on the alter
in DRACULA, A.D. 1972.

WHEN Warner Brothers noted the success of AIP's COUNT YORGA, VAMPIRE at the beginning of the 1970s - in which Robert Quarry prowled present-day Los Angeles - they ordered two Hammer Dracula's to follow suit, bringing the character to modern-day London and away from the Eastern European neverwhere which had died its death with SCARS OF DRACULA. What should have been a fresh new direction resulted in DRACULA, A.D. 1972, one of the studio's most glorious mishaps. In Hyde Park, 1872, Lawrence Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) dies from the strain of destroying Dracula (Christopher Lee). During Van Helsing's funeral at St Bartolph's, one of the vampire's disciples - Alucard (Christopher Neame) - buries his master's ashes nearby. Jumping to Chelsea, 1972, we see Alucard organising a black mass at St Bartolph's, supposedly for teen thrills. The culmination of the ritual, however, is the rejuvenation of Dracula, and Alucard lures young victims to the deserted graveyard for his master's pleasure, one of which is buxom Jessica Van Helsing (Stephanie Beacham), descended from a line of vampire hunters and the Count's favoured target. Her grandfather Lorimar (Cushing) - equipped with the devices to snare the Count - subsequently confronts his enemy.

The major flaw of the film is that once Dracula is resurrected, he never leaves the derelict church where he's been revived, so the movie might as well take place in 1872, where the film's rousing pre-credits sequence takes place. Innovations such as Dracula claiming his first male and black victim are overshadowed by the phoney younger characters, who seem a good decade behind the times with their hilariously misconceived banter. Cushing relishes his Van Helsing role, and at least tries to act as a voice of reason to Jessica and the film in general, although the script insults the audience's intelligence when even Van Helsing has to take up pen and paper to work out that Alucard is Dracula spelled backwards.

Vampires in the bargain basement: THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA.

Warner expressed little enthusiasm for the direct sequel - the sombre and apocalyptic THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA - and never released the film in America, where it wouldn't be in general circulation until independent Dynamite issued the film under the flaccid title COUNT DRACULA AND HIS VAMPIRE BRIDE late in 1978. This time, rather than the Count skulking in crypts and pouncing on Hammer's latest nubile protégé, Van Helsing (Cushing) discovers that reclusive property developer D.D. Denham is in fact the Count (Lee), who intends to wipe out the human race with a newly perfected strain of plague. The script creates another own-goal in a plan which will inevitably deprive the vampire of his food supply (a mournful echo perhaps of Lee's own overwhelming desire to put Dracula behind him). The Count is morphed into a hybrid of Howard Hughes and Fu Manchu for an almost James Bond-like adventure; this will probably be the only Dracula film to have the Count employing a gang of motorcycle-riding toughs to do his daylight dirty work.

What makes Hammer's modern-day Dracula's so disappointing - both directed by Alan Gibson - is that they ignore the maturity of Bram Stoker. Stoker reiterates the sense of London as the heart of Empire, using its familiar locations to heighten fears of invasion, contamination and disease (at least THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA hints at contagion). Association with the East End links The Count with foreigners, especially Jews from Eastern Europe and Orientals, as well as with an area connected in the public mind with crime. The author marshals discourses to those we are familiar with now in the war against terrorism: the threat of shape-changing terrorists from the East, among us and invisible. In the invasive other, British culture sees its own imperial practices mirrored back in monstrous forms; Dracula resonates not least because his actions approximates those of the colonising Englishman.